Gore Hill Cemetary

Between the highway and the hospital, behind a privet-bent wire fence, lies the Gore Hill Memorial Cemetery. Driving down the Pacific Highway to Crows Nest, past the derelict buildings of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's former headquarters, the cemetery is all but invisible. Parts of it, near the Royal North Shore Hospital, are maintained. But most of it is in splendid decay. Gravestones recording the deaths of young women in childbirth, the children themselves, and young men caught by disease or war, lie at ricketty angles uplifted by woody weeds and even trees. Some of Australia's heroes lie here, or once did, but who would know? If ever there was a cemetery of ghosts, this is it. Australians try hard to forget their history. At Gore Hill, they have to large part succeeded.